4,398 research outputs found
Verification of Nondeterministic Quantum Programs
Nondeterministic choice is a useful program construct that provides a way to
describe the behaviour of a program without specifying the details of possible
implementations. It supports the stepwise refinement of programs, a method that
has proven useful in software development. Nondeterminism has also been
introduced in quantum programming, and the termination of nondeterministic
quantum programs has been extensively analysed. In this paper, we go beyond
termination analysis to investigate the verification of nondeterministic
quantum programs where properties are given by sets of hermitian operators on
the associated Hilbert space. Hoare-type logic systems for partial and total
correctness are proposed, which turn out to be both sound and relatively
complete with respect to their corresponding semantic correctness. To show the
utility of these proof systems, we analyse some quantum algorithms, such as
quantum error correction scheme, the Deutsch algorithm, and a nondeterministic
quantum walk. Finally, a proof assistant prototype is implemented to aid in the
automated reasoning of nondeterministic quantum programs.Comment: Accepted by ASPLOS '2
Automated Workarounds from Java Program Specifications based on SAT Solving
The failures that bugs in software lead to can sometimes be bypassed by the so-called workarounds: when a (faulty) routine fails, alternative routines that the system offers can be used in place of the failing one, to circumvent the failure. Existing approaches to workaround-based system recovery consider workarounds that are produced from equivalent method sequences, automatically computed from user-provided abstract models, or directly produced from user-provided equivalent sequences of operations. In this paper, we present two techniques for computing workarounds from Java code equipped with formal specifications, that improve previous approaches in two respects. First, the particular state where the failure originated is actively involved in computing workarounds, thus leading to repairs that are more state specific. Second, our techniques automatically compute workarounds on concrete program state characterizations, avoiding abstract software models and user-provided equivalences. The first technique uses SAT solving to compute a sequence of methods that is equivalent to a failing method on a specific failing state, but which can also be generalized to schemas for workaround reuse. The second technique directly exploits SAT to circumvent a failing method, building a state that mimics the (correct) behaviour of a failing routine, from a specific program state too. We perform an experimental evaluation based on case studies involving implementations of collections and a library for date arithmetic, showing that the techniques can effectively compute workarounds from complex contracts in an important number of cases, in time that makes them feasible to be used for run-time repairs. Our results also show that our state-specific workarounds enable us to produce repairs in many cases where previous workaround-based approaches are inapplicable.Fil: Uva, Marcelo Ariel. Universidad Nacional de RĂo Cuarto; ArgentinaFil: Ponzio, Pablo Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Conicet - CĂłrdoba; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de RĂo Cuarto; ArgentinaFil: Regis, Germán. Universidad Nacional de RĂo Cuarto; ArgentinaFil: Aguirre, Nazareno Matias. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Conicet - CĂłrdoba; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de RĂo Cuarto; ArgentinaFil: Frias, Marcelo Fabian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Conicet - CĂłrdoba; Argentina. Instituto TecnolĂłgico de Buenos Aires; Argentin
Blazes: Coordination Analysis for Distributed Programs
Distributed consistency is perhaps the most discussed topic in distributed
systems today. Coordination protocols can ensure consistency, but in practice
they cause undesirable performance unless used judiciously. Scalable
distributed architectures avoid coordination whenever possible, but
under-coordinated systems can exhibit behavioral anomalies under fault, which
are often extremely difficult to debug. This raises significant challenges for
distributed system architects and developers. In this paper we present Blazes,
a cross-platform program analysis framework that (a) identifies program
locations that require coordination to ensure consistent executions, and (b)
automatically synthesizes application-specific coordination code that can
significantly outperform general-purpose techniques. We present two case
studies, one using annotated programs in the Twitter Storm system, and another
using the Bloom declarative language.Comment: Updated to include additional materials from the original technical
report: derivation rules, output stream label
Controllability in partial and uncertain environments
© 2014 IEEE.Controller synthesis is a well studied problem that attempts to automatically generate an operational behaviour model of the system-to-be that satisfies a given goal when deployed in a given domain model that behaves according to specified assumptions. A limitation of many controller synthesis techniques is that they require complete descriptions of the problem domain. This is limiting in the context of modern incremental development processes when a fully described problem domain is unavailable, undesirable or uneconomical. Previous work on Modal Transition Systems (MTS) control problems exists, however it is restricted to deterministic MTSs and deterministic Labelled Transition Systems (LTS) implementations. In this paper we study the Modal Transition System Control Problem in its full generality, allowing for nondeterministic MTSs modelling the environments behaviour and nondeterministic LTS implementations. Given an nondeterministic MTS we ask if all, none or some of the nondeterministic LTSs it describes admit an LTS controller that guarantees a given property. We show a technique that solves effectively the MTS realisability problem and it can be, in some cases, reduced to deterministic control problems. In all cases the MTS realisability problem is in same complexity class as the corresponding LTS problem
Exploiting the Temporal Logic Hierarchy and the Non-Confluence Property for Efficient LTL Synthesis
The classic approaches to synthesize a reactive system from a linear temporal
logic (LTL) specification first translate the given LTL formula to an
equivalent omega-automaton and then compute a winning strategy for the
corresponding omega-regular game. To this end, the obtained omega-automata have
to be (pseudo)-determinized where typically a variant of Safra's
determinization procedure is used. In this paper, we show that this
determinization step can be significantly improved for tool implementations by
replacing Safra's determinization by simpler determinization procedures. In
particular, we exploit (1) the temporal logic hierarchy that corresponds to the
well-known automata hierarchy consisting of safety, liveness, Buechi, and
co-Buechi automata as well as their boolean closures, (2) the non-confluence
property of omega-automata that result from certain translations of LTL
formulas, and (3) symbolic implementations of determinization procedures for
the Rabin-Scott and the Miyano-Hayashi breakpoint construction. In particular,
we present convincing experimental results that demonstrate the practical
applicability of our new synthesis procedure
FliPpr: A Prettier Invertible Printing System
When implementing a programming language, we often write
a parser and a pretty-printer. However, manually writing both programs
is not only tedious but also error-prone; it may happen that a pretty-printed
result is not correctly parsed. In this paper, we propose FliPpr,
which is a program transformation system that uses program inversion
to produce a CFG parser from a pretty-printer. This novel approach
has the advantages of fine-grained control over pretty-printing, and easy
reuse of existing efficient pretty-printer and parser implementations
On the Efficiency of Optimising Shallow Backtracking in Prolog
The cost of backtracking has been identified as one of the bottlenecks in
achieving peak performance in compiled Prolog programs. Much of the backtracking in
Prolog programs is shallow, i.e. is caused by unification failures in the head of a
clause when there are more alternatives for the same procedure, and so special treatment
of this form of backtracking has been proposed as a significant optimisation. This
paper describes a modified WAM which optimises shallow backtracking. Four different
implementation approaches are compared. A number of benchmark results are presented,
measuring the relative tradeoffs between compilation time, code size, and run time. The
results show that the speedup gained by this optimisation can be significant
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